The streets of Dubai will soon see Robocops to help fight crime and help people out

Dubai public will soon start seeing robot police in the city following the arrival of an operational robot policeman.

Dubbed “Robocop” this is Dubai Police’s latest smart addition to the force, and has been designed to help fight crime and help people.

The autonomous Robocop stands 170cm tall, weighs 100kgs, is equipped with an emotional detector which can recognise gestures and hand signals from 1.5 metres away. It can also detect a person’s emotions and facial expressions, whether the individual is happy, sad or smiling, and has the ability to change his expression and greetings accordingly to put people at ease.

Khalid Nasser Alrazooqi, general director of the smart services department at Dubai Police, said the launch of Robocop is a momentous milestone for the emirate and a step towards realising its vision to be a global leader in smart city technology adoption.

The unveiling of Robocop follows the announcement of the Smart Dubai 2021 strategy, which has seen the city’s police use the latest technology to support its activity.

Alrazooqi said there is a lot of data sharing across different government departments and one of the key types of information that is shared is accident location data in Dubai. “This will enable us to look at the effects of driving on different routes in the city and how we can provide alternative routes in real time as a solution,” he said.

He added that another aspect that the general public can now use easily is the Dubai Police application, which provides more than 125 services without the need of people having to visit a physical police station anymore. “This is a key initiative that we have worked on and the next progressive step is to provide the smart intelligent system,” he said. “As a customer, Dubai Police should know what people require before they ask us.”

Alrazooqi said Dubai Police also needs to look at providing what has been dubbed the “artificial police station”, where the general public in the city can visit police stations and access services without the need to interact with human beings. “With a built-in tablet device, people can access and complete smart services through Robocop using credit cards for payments.”

It is working across different channels and one of the channels is to provide robot police across the city as part of an integrated initiative of providing smart services. “You will soon find Robocops in the city as part of the smart policing initiative providing different kinds of services,” he said.

“Dubai is growing fast. We have more than 200 nationalities living in the city and need to find alternative ways to deal with customers. Instead of hiring new officers, we can provide robots that deliver services to the public,” said Alrazooqi.

Beyond robot police

Looking beyond the robot police, Dubai Police is exploring ways to provide services on on kiosk machines, over the internet, intranet and using artificial intelligence.

He said people are an important part of Dubai Police and it’s vital that they support the police initiatives in tackling all types of crime by providing information that could provide additional security to Dubai. “The Police Eye component of the Dubai Police app allows people to take any picture, make a voice recording or shoot a video, and this information can be used by other departments,” he said.

The next step for Dubai Police is implementing Blockchain so the force can exchange data with government entities and ease the process of transferring the information in a secure way.

Meanwhile with predictive analytics expected to play a transformative role in how the Smart Dubai initiatives are being rolled out, Alrazooqi pointed out that Dubai Police has already started working with these kinds of tools. “We have began working with smart tools that can predict crime and location,” he said. “However, the tools still don’t give us high enough accuracy rates. In the USA, they have also started using similar tools, but even there, these tools are still not mature enough.”

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